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ANYTHING SUBTITLED “A SOCIAL HISTORY OF ____” IS HARD FOR ME TO RESIST

Our Type Reader for September is Nathalie Atkinson

Nathalie Atkinson visits Type Books’ Queen West store weekly,
if not more often. Usually there’s at least one special order book waiting for
her when she arrives to see what new books hit our shelves before her last
visit. You’ve probably seen Atkinson’s name in print or online, as she’s one of
Canada’s most insightful journalists on arts, culture, and fashion. (Check out
this incredible feature on how Instagram has changed farm work.) She’s also the
host of the Revue Cinema’s Designing the Movies series, which discusses the
art direction and style of movies ranging from Heathers to Orlando to Mike Nichols’s
Working Girl (later this September).

We gave Nathalie the Type Reader questionnaire, and in turn learned
about the dangers of reading peer pressure, which reading material works best
on streetcars, and received a very convincing pitch for a Tom Hiddleston-led
Fred Astaire biopic:

NATHALIE ANSWERS THE TYPE QUESTIONNAIRE

What is the first book you
remember loving?Where the Sidewalk
Ends by Shel Silverstein. I
have no tattoos but if I ever got any they would feature his darkly funny verse
and cartoons. The art and text of his rhymes work together to add up to some
unforgettably witty and twisted mental images. I mean, “Someone ate the
baby.” Someone ate the baby. The honesty in his work for
children is something I appreciate even more in hindsight, because I think his
scathing yet upbeat verse populated by monsters and misfits prepared me well
for life.

What is your favourite
virtue in a book?

Idiosyncrasy.

What do you appreciate most
in a book character?

Recklessness and ingenuity.

What character (real or
fictional) do you dislike the most?

The unreliable narrator.

If you were to write a
non-fiction book about anything, what would it be about?

If the vocabulary of
olfaction weren’t so esoteric, I’d write some sort of book about scent. Or I’d
like to write an abecedary of my other love—television detectives from Columbo
and Rockford to Inspectors Morse, Tennison, and Wallander.

Anne Carson, TS Eliot,
David Berman, Dante. And I’ve had to replace copies of George Elliott
Clarke’s Whylah Falls when the bindings fall apart from use.

Your favourite book
illustrators?

Rex Whistler, Quentin
Blake, Aubrey Beardsley, Eric Ravilious, the overall illustrative design work
of Canadian cartoonist Seth (both for his own books and those of others)
that considers the whole book as an object. I’ve bought books solely to enjoy
the ornamentation of Cressida Bell and Coralie Bickford-Smith. I
would also include Tomi Ungerer—plus, it’s fun to imagine the mischief he and
pals Silverstein, Philip Roth, and Maurice Sendak got up to in the 1960s. I
love artist Edward Bawden’s sensibility and eye for colour and am always on the
hunt for vintage books he has illustrated or designed. And the illustrator W.A.
Dwiggins, who created typefaces (Caledonia, Electra, and many others),
popularized colophons, and designed the early memorable Alfred A. Knopf
beauties. His H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine is stunning. The
first major book on his life and work (W.A.
Dwiggins: A Life in Design)
comes out this fall and is at the top of my design list.

Do you read on public
transportation?

Yes! It’s where I
tend to read history and biography. I find reading that contains information
less bothered by noise and interruption.

What qualities do you want
in a book you’re read while traveling?

Subject matter that complements the mood
and purpose of my travels. To a weekend at the lake, I’ll bring a combo
like The Nature Fix by Florence Williams and Claire
Fuller’s Swimming Lessons. For work trips, I prefer immersion into
cultural history. Anything subtitled “A Social History of ____” is hard for me
to resist.

What book have you never
read but have always meant to? Do you think you will ever read it?

In theory I’d like to be able to talk with my partner
about one of his favourites, William Gaddis’s The Recognitions. It’s become my albatross.

What book do you pretend to
have read, but in fact have not?

In my twenties I gave in to campus peer
pressure and feigned having read David
Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, without incident. Then I tried
the reverse with Fifty Shades of Grey. It was getting a suspicious
amount of praise in one of my social circles, so to have an informed opinion, I
finally forced myself to actually read the thing. Serves me right.

If you could force a single
celebrity to read a specific book in it’s entirety, who would you chose, and
what book would you make them read?

As acclaimed as he is,
I think Fred Astaire’s genius is still
underestimated. So I’d like Tom Hiddleston to read musicologist Todd Decker’s
study Music Makes Me: Fred Astaire and Jazz. Decker makes the
case for Astaire as a progressive-minded and influential jazz artist by
analyzing his musicianship, choreography, and creative relationships with band
leaders and composers. I’d hope he would then be intrigued enough to spearhead
(and star in) an indie Astaire biopic. Something offbeat, prismatic, and
elliptical like Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There. Hiddleston is the
first actor I’ve ever felt might get and be able to convey Astaire’s personal
earnestness, his on-screen sardonic charm, and his gossamer dancing grace.

What book(s) are you
reading right now?

Lily Tuck’s Sisters and The
Visitors by Catherine Burns (both scratched my current Daphne du
Maurier itch). The Book of Salt by Michelle Truong, a historical
novel about Binh, a gay Vietnamese exile inspired by Gertrude Stein and Alice
B. Toklas’s cook. In the last bit of fresh air before the Toronto International
Film Festival starts, I’m trying to read ahead by making my way through Bluebird,
Bluebird by Attica Locke and finishing Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan
Beach. But mainly I’m being melancholy about the end of summer (and the
last of my lake swims) and savouring Gillian Best’s The Last Wave. Technically I am also reading The Unfinished Palazzo by Judith Mackrell (in NetGalley format)
ahead of its publication, but I will definitely be buying it when it hits
shelves in North America.